


The Trouble With Kwaamis

by NotGarfield



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Duusu is the captain of the Gabenath ship, F/M, Feelings Realization, Gabriel can't do emotions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2020-12-16 14:34:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21037799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotGarfield/pseuds/NotGarfield
Summary: Gabriel is in denial. Duusu and Nooroo won't let him stay there.





	1. Chapter 1

“If you ever need Mayura again, I’ll be here for you.”

Gabriel frowned as he took the peacock brooch from Nathalie’s hand and closed his fist around it. It tingled as with an electric current against his skin; he had to resist the urge to throw it to the floor and step on it. “I don’t need Mayura. I need you alive and well.”

Nathalie hesitated, looking away. “Don’t write off something that could be an asset,” she said with a small frown. “For the moment” - and she started to sit up - “I should get back to work.”

“No. You should rest. I’ll take you to your room.” He reached for her, meaning to pick her up, but she pushed his hands away weakly, a light blush on her cheeks.

“I can walk, sir. If you’ll just...help me up.”

He took her arms and helped her stand, then wrapped an arm around her waist to support her. Their kwaamis circled in the air around them. Despite Nathalie’s stubborn words, she trembled with effort as she walked, making Gabriel thankful that her usual guest room wasn’t far from the dining room. He led her to the bed and watched her curl up against the pillows. “ _ Rest _ ,” he said, in a tone intended to silence any argument. “I don’t want to see you in the office for the rest of the day, and I’ll be in to check on you.”

He half expected protest, but Nathalie only nodded, her eyes already beginning to close. She had kicked off her heels before pulling her feet up onto the bed; Gabriel carefully removed her glasses and placed them on the nightstand, getting a small smile from her in thanks. 

“Let me know if you need anything,” he said, and left the room.

Mercifully, the rambunctious Duusu had stayed quiet this whole time, but as soon as the door closed behind Gabriel, she let out a squeal. “Ohhh! Am I still going to get to see Miss Nathalie?”

“Sometimes,” Gabriel said absently. “But she won’t be Mayura anymore. She’s...sick, and it’s not good for her.”

“But I still get to see her! Hooray!” Duusu did a flip in the air next to Gabriel’s right ear, making him cringe away from the noise. “She’s so sweet, isn’t she, Mister Gabriel? It’s so selfless of her to do all this because she loves you.”

Gabriel stopped walking. “Excuse me?”

Duusu’s eyes widened and she curled up on herself. “Oh, oh no. I shouldn’t have said that, should I?” 

She let out a shrill whimper, so piercing that Gabriel found himself shaking his head and saying “it’s fine” just to silence her. Unfortunately, the silence was no more peaceful.  _ Because she loves you… _

He refused to stoop to questioning Duusu about what she had meant. He and Nathalie  _ were _ friends and confidantes, after all; what with the enormity of their shared secrets, of course their relationship was something other than strictly professional, and that didn’t need to imply anything he should be concerned about. The fact that she hadn’t turned him in to the authorities months ago proved that Nathalie cared about him. No, this wasn’t news, and it was no cause for worry. He returned to his office, both the kwaamis following silently behind, and shut the door behind him.

*****

The rest of the afternoon was infuriatingly unproductive. Gabriel, despite his best efforts, was unable to stop Duusu’s words from bouncing around the inside of his skull, scattering any coherent thoughts that dared to coalesce. He gave up on sketching new designs when he found every face and figure he drew resembling Nathalie, and was finally reduced to pacing around the office, crumpling a sheet of paper in his hands. The kwaamis looked on in concern. He had snapped at Duusu when she started up her shrill ramblings again; Nooroo knew to remain quiet.

At half past six, he went to check on Nathalie. There was no response to his knock, so he opened the door a crack, then fully when he saw the scene inside. At some point since he brought her in, Nathalie must have woken up enough to make herself more comfortable, because her blazer had been tossed to the floor next to her shoes and her hair was loose, fanning across the pillow. But she was sound asleep now, still lying half-curled on her side on top of the covers. Her left hand rested at the edge of the bed.

Gabriel should have left when he saw that she was sleeping. Instead he approached, knelt beside the bed, placed his hand on top of hers. 

_ She loves you _ , came Duusu’s voice in his head, as clear as if she were there in the room. He was finding it harder and harder not to wonder what the kwaami meant. Despite Nathalie’s near-constant presence in every area of his life, he knew very little about what drove her; “I want to help you,” she always said, but she never explained any further, and he had never thought to push the question.

His eyes traced her face, calm in sleep, but marked by shadows under her eyes and a spot of dried blood on the edge of her lower lip. Why, in fact, was she willing to die for his quest?

Her eyelids fluttered half-open and closed again, once, twice, then opened all the way. He drew back hastily, removing his hand from hers, as she propped herself up on her elbow. “Ga - Mr. Agreste?” she said in a voice hoarse from sleep.

For the second time that day, he found himself struck by the vivid color of her eyes. “How are you feeling?” he asked, trying not to notice it.

“Much better, thank you.” She sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the bed, but he noticed her sway slightly and her hands tighten around fistfuls of the comforter, even though she hadn’t stood up yet. She blinked.

Gabriel sighed, getting to his feet. “I would like you to stay here tonight. Your use of the miraculous today obviously affected you strongly. Do you still keep an overnight bag here?”

“Yes, sir.” She nodded to a plain black duffel stowed in the corner of the room. Then her hands went to tug at the hem of her sweater and smooth it down, and all of a sudden Gabriel remembered how he had helped her to the room earlier, the feel of her waist under his hand and the way she had pressed against his side as she struggled to balance.  _ Stop _ , he chided himself.  _ That’s not appropriate _ .

Luckily he had never been one to blush. Nathalie, strangely enough, was, despite her stubborn emotional control; and as soon as that thought crossed his mind, he realized that he only knew that because he had seen her blush when talking to him. Multiple times.

“Sir?” He startled and came to, and found her staring at him with the concerned expression that she frequently insisted on wearing, most of all when  _ she _ was the one he should be concerned about. “I think you should have dinner with Adrien tonight, if I am not able to be there.”

“Yes, yes. I’ll have food sent up for you.” With that, Gabriel turned and fled.

*****

He didn’t want to check the clock beside his bed. As long as he didn’t, he could pretend that he hadn’t been lying awake  _ that  _ long and he could still get a decent night’s sleep. But his restlessness eventually overcame him, and he rolled over and squinted at the numbers. It was after three.

With a heavy sigh, he got up and started to pace the room. Nooroo watched him from the pillow; in the dimness, his violet eyes shone like a cat’s. Duusu had begged to be allowed to stay in Nathalie’s room, and Gabriel had agreed, after checking with Nathalie and making it clear that the brooch was staying with him. His assistant was able to handle the hyperactive kwaami far better than he could.

“Master?” said Nooroo cautiously.

“What, Nooroo?”

“Your mind is disturbed.”

Gabriel turned to frown at the glowing eyes. “And what is that to you?”

“With all due respect, master,” Nooroo chirped, “I can feel the strength of your emotions. Perhaps it would be a more peaceful night for both of us if you talked about it…?”

“No.”

Gabriel resumed his pacing. He loathed to admit it, but Nooroo was right; it was the confusion in his head, not simple insomnia, that was keeping him awake. His every interaction with Nathalie outside of business had been turned over ten, twenty times as he reached for the details he had not, at the time, cared enough to note.

After the disaster that was Style Queen, when he finally managed to whisper that he was giving up, her arms had tightened around him and she had given a small “oh” that sounded surprised, but not sad. Her cheeks had turned red in the garden on Heroes’ Day when she said she would always be there for him. And after Feast, even as she looked up from her hunched position on the floor, she had smiled. He hadn’t needed his miraculous to sense the calm radiating off of her, her fearlessness in the face of the consequences of her repeated transformations.

Gabriel was beginning to think he had been very, very blind.

“Damn it,” he said aloud.

“Master, what are you going to do?”

He resisted the urge to snap at his kwaami. “Nothing needs to be done, Nooroo.”

Nooroo made a sound as if he was about to continue, but at that moment Gabriel heard footsteps passing in the corridor outside. He glared. If his son was trying to sneak out of the house, and at this hour too…

“Adrien!” he roared as he jerked the bedroom door open.

Nathalie spun round wide-eyed, slopping water from the glass she was holding down the front of her lavender pajamas. “Sir?”

“Oh.” Gabriel stared for a moment, trying to collect himself. He felt uneasily conscious of his every movement, and of the fact that the neckline of Nathalie’s pajamas, while modest, exposed her neck and collarbones instead of hiding them as her usual turtlenecks did. Then a pang of guilt hit him for noticing that. “I apologize, Nathalie. I thought my son was sneaking out again.”

She shook her head, and what looked like tear tracks gleamed momentarily on her cheeks, catching the faint moonlight from the nearby window. But her voice was perfectly steady. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

“I was already awake.”

Gabriel felt like he was looking at someone he had never met before, and not only because of her loose hair and unfamiliar dress. Nooroo’s question rang in his head:  _ what are you going to do _ ? Hell, he was tired of kwaamis and their invasive remarks. Moved by a sudden instinct, he stepped forward and grabbed Nathalie’s wrist.

When he knew to pay attention, it was impossible to miss her gasp and the way her limbs tensed at his touch. He didn’t know how he had missed it before. She looked up at him with lips parted in confusion, the absence of her heels exaggerating the difference in their height. “Is everything all right, sir?”

Her wrist felt hot in his hand. There was no way to address this. It had gone unaddressed thus far, hadn’t it? He let her go and took three steps backwards, back into the safety of his bedroom. “Yes, everything is fine. Sleep well, Nathalie.” 

The door closed on her reply.


	2. Chapter 2

_ Everything is fine _ . That was easy for him to say.

Nathalie set her glass down on the nightstand, sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed her hands over her face. She had woken at two in the morning, and decided after some tossing and turning to get up, turn on the bedside lamp and read until she felt sleepy again. That had been an hour ago. The novel she had tucked in her overnight bag months ago had proved unable to hold her interest longer than four pages, and she felt even more awake than before.

Of course, the scare Gabriel had given her hadn’t helped with that. She could still feel her heart pounding as it gradually slowed to its normal pace. 

A small noise like a muffled yawn came from behind her, and she turned, pulling her feet up onto the bed, to see Duusu - who had slept like a rock through Nathalie’s earlier restlessness - opening her magenta eyes. “Miss Nathalie,” she said sleepily. “You’re awake.”

“It’s only because I slept this afternoon.”

Duusu stretched and sat up on the pillow. “Oh...oh no! You’re sad!”

“I’m” -  _ fine _ , she almost said out of habit, but she had learned early on that there was no point in trying to hide her feelings from the empathetic kwaami. “Yes, I’m a little sad, but you don’t need to worry.”

“I’m so sorry, Miss Nathalie!” Duusu floated up from the pillow and over to rest on Nathalie’s knee, staring up at her with eyes wide and plumes drooping in distress. “Are you sad because of Mister Gabriel again? I thought he was really nice to you today.”

Nathalie reached for her glass and took a sip. “Ah - yes, he was very nice to me.” Too nice. The image reappeared in her mind of him kneeling next to her chair, tilting his head toward her and closing his eyes for a moment just long enough to make her heart jump into her throat before he drew back. Her temples began to ache as tears welled behind her eyes again. 

“Oh no, don’t cry!”

But the innocent concern in Duusu’s expression made the tears spill over instead. Nathalie crawled to the head of the bed and wrapped the comforter around herself, as Duusu hovered by her head, nuzzling her cheeks and brushing the drops away.

*****

In the morning - or rather later in the morning - Nathalie drank a second cup of coffee, one more than usual, and dabbed a bit more makeup than usual under her eyes. It was simple enough to cover for a bad night; she had done it before, and it always worked. She fully expected it to work again. 

Working with Gabriel Agreste should have taught her by now to expect the unexpected.

“Nathalie, how are you feeling?” he asked in a clipped tone, approaching her desk. His hands were clasped behind his back in the same stiff posture as always, and from her sitting position, she had to crane her neck to look up at him. 

She felt an inexplicable twinge of discomfort, and frowned. She knew his demeanor was only a symptom of awkwardness, not indifference; he didn’t quite know how to check up on her outside of an immediate crisis. So why did something about the situation bother her? “I’m fine, thank you, sir.” 

She returned her attention to her computer, but her employer didn’t move. “Of course,” he said warily, relaxing neither his stance nor his voice. “You were awake last night, and you seem a bit tired today. I wanted to ask.”

“Has my work today been unsatisfactory?”

“Certainly not.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Thank you for your concern,” Nathalie said, and returned to her typing, meaning to signal that the conversation was at a close. Still, Gabriel lingered for a moment before walking away. 

*****

It wasn’t until an hour later that Nathalie realized why she had minded the exchange: she hadn’t coughed. Until today, Gabriel had never taken it upon himself to check on her condition without something happening to remind him of it. He fretted over her for an hour, or a day, however long it took her to pull herself back together, and then they resumed business as usual. That was how it had been since Heroes’s Day, and just that little had been hard enough to bear lately. She didn’t know if she could handle his concern bleeding through into daily life.

Even without looking, Nathalie could practically feel him standing on the other side of the room, and his presence felt oppressive. She glanced at the clock. It was close enough to lunchtime.

“Sir?” she said, standing. “I’ve reached a stopping point in my work, so I’m going to take my lunch break now, if you don’t mind.”

Gabriel looked over at her, and she almost thought his eyebrows lifted slightly. “Very well.”

*****

She returned to her apartment that night; Gabriel frowned at the suggestion, but didn’t prevent her. The tension in her body eased as the door clicked shut behind her. She put the kettle on, then leaned on the counter and looked out through the little window above the sink. It faced east, and what sky she could see was mostly dark, despite the bright sunset colors she had seen in the other direction as she entered the building. Somewhere east, amidst the lights outside the window, was the Agreste mansion.

Unbidden, her mind wandered back to the day before. She rarely permitted herself to dwell on the moments of intimacy she and Gabriel sometimes shared; they happened in crisis, when emotions and adrenaline ran high. They didn’t matter. So she tried her hardest not to think about them.

_ “Nathalie,” he breathed in her ear, and if she hadn’t felt so weak she would have chided him for using her civilian name while transformed, even as quiet as it had been. His fingers dug into her side and her hands clenched around fistfuls of the back of his suit as he sprang from rooftop to rooftop. She caught a note of fear under the anger in his tone. “What in the world were you thinking? What if I had lost you?” _

It didn’t matter. She had scared him by disappearing, by almost being found out.

_ “I’m not so sure anymore.” She didn’t know what he wasn’t sure about. Finding the Guardian? Something else? The whole endeavor?...Impossible. His hand tightened slightly on hers, and he leaned toward her, closing his eyes. Her stomach dropped and her heart gave a thud that felt like it would crack her ribcage. Her eyes closed too, and then blinked open a moment later when she felt his grip on her hand relax again. He had pulled back slightly, and she winced, feeling like a fool for the assumption she had made. _

Nathalie shook herself as she became aware of the kettle, which had been whistling for who knew how long. She turned off the stovetop and went to the cabinet to get out a mug and a teabag. If only this wasn’t taking so long, their endless line of defeats offering her and Gabriel more opportunities to grow closer. It would be so much easier to help him if she wasn’t constantly fighting with the involuntary hope that his increasingly affectionate gestures stirred up. Like poison ivy, her hope seemed to spread the more she scratched at it and tried to scrub it away.

She scooped a spoonful of sugar into her tea and stirred it absently. For both of their sakes, as well as Emilie’s, they needed to finish this. She was beginning to wonder if it was possible as long as the two heroes still had the guardian and their rotating cast of temporary allies on their side. So many of them, and her and Gabriel just two desperate people.

Nathalie stiffened and her spoon went still. Now,  _ that _ just might work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back by popular demand...which is not something I would ever have expected to get to say, much less about the very first story I posted on this site. I've been lurking in the world of fanfiction for something like eight years now and never before had the courage to join in myself, and the welcome I got blew me away. Thanks to the Gabenath Discord server for helping me find the confidence to post this, and thanks to everyone who left kudos and comments on the first chapter!
> 
> That said, this was not intended to have multiple chapters, and this one is a bit of a transition as I tried to figure out where I was going. I hope it's not too much weaker than the first and I'm more optimistic about what's coming.


	3. Chapter 3

Gabriel could hear the laughter long before he reached the dining room door: Adrien’s familiar laugh, mixed with a melodic female one. Was that Nathalie? Of course, who else could it be. She was laughing hard, breathlessly. Gabriel didn’t think he had ever heard such a thing from her before.

As he approached, words came into focus; it was Adrien gasping through his guffaws. “And then there was the time he was telling me about with the watermelon and his family’s gerbils…”

Gabriel looked around the doorframe. Adrien and Nathalie were sitting side by side with their backs to him, with Adrien’s homework spread out on the table, clearly abandoned. He lost track of what was being said about gerbils and watermelons. Nathalie held her glasses in one hand as she wiped her eyes with the other, still shaking with laughter as Adrien gestured melodramatically. After a moment, as she began to settle, she put them back on and smoothed a hand over her forehead - probably fixing that one strand that always escaped from the rest. She turned in her chair to face Adrien better, and Gabriel caught a glimpse of her grin.

When was the last time Adrien had told a story so animatedly, with such an attentive audience, within this house? Gabriel remembered their conversation from two weeks prior.  _ “As far as I’m concerned, she’s already part of the family,” _ Adrien had said.

Then he recalled the rest of what his son had been suggesting by that comment, and shook his head, focusing on the conversation taking place in front of him now. 

“...So Nino is still trying to clean up the kitchen before his parents and Chris get home, right? But now these gerbils are running around, too…”

Gabriel cleared his throat, and Adrien went silent. Nathalie sat up straighter and wiped the smile off her face as they both turned to look at him. 

“Nathalie,” he said. “I have time now to discuss the matter you mentioned this morning, and it seems that you and Adrien have reached a stopping point in his work.”

Adrien looked at the floor as if he were expecting to be told off. Nathalie swallowed and stood, tugging at the hem of her blazer in an uncharacteristic nervous gesture. It reminded him uncomfortably of the days when she had always been on edge around him, anxious of incurring his temper at anything that could be perceived as insubordination or a slip in her performance. Such an attitude seemed strange now. Well, he was hardly going to tell her off for laughing with his son. 

Heaven knew, he needed someone who would.

*****

“No. It’s out of the question.”

The declaration was pointless, he knew. He could read Nathalie’s determination in the press of her lips, the tilt of her chin. As an assistant, her job was to do as she was told, and she had always been good at it; but in this arena, where the stakes were so much higher, he was learning just how stubborn she could be. This was not going to be a short or easy conversation.

“Sir,” she said carefully. “We need to find the guardian. We need to gain the upper hand on the heroes, either by taking their allies out of the picture or gaining more power on our side, or both. This plan would let us do all of that in one stroke.” 

“It’s a brilliant plan, Nathalie,” he admitted, and noticed the beginning of a smile, quickly suppressed, lift the corners of her mouth. “But I can’t allow you to be Mayura again.”

Her expression hardened slightly. “With all due respect, I think you’re being unreasonable.”

He stopped himself before snapping at her that he wasn’t the unreasonable one, but his voice still came out strained. “Your condition worsens every time you transform. We don’t know how many times you have left.”

There was just a flicker of a reaction in Nathalie’s eyes, and a trace of emotion sparked through his miraculous, gone too quickly for him to identify. She had never seemed afraid of dying. But then again, her latest exploit as Mayura had left her much worse than before, and surely her courage had a limit somewhere. Gabriel realized too late that it was probably callous of him to remind her of the consequences, of which he knew she was well aware, so bluntly.

He tried to backpedal. “There are other ways.”

Nathalie took a step forward, not quite intruding into his personal space, but pressing on the edge of it. “I’ve told you that I don’t care about the cost.”

“You  _ should _ .” Gabriel barely realized that he was scowling. All those statements of loyalty had been her way of saying she loved him, hadn’t they? He had trusted in her own self-preservation, not giving too much weight to her words, as someone who was accustomed to making overly-dramatic declarations himself. But Nathalie wasn’t like that. Truly, she  _ didn’t _ care about the cost - but someone needed to. She wasn’t thinking clearly and he couldn’t let her destroy herself.

He felt hands on his upper arms and snapped back to reality. Nathalie had taken another step closer. “Please,” she said. “Let me do this for you, sir.”

The honorific sounded tender, more like a pet name than a title, and Gabriel found his eyes lingering on her lips in the silence after she spoke; he dragged his gaze up to her eyes with some reluctance. It still astonished him that she cared so much - for someone who certainly didn’t deserve it, on top of that. One more remarkable thing about her, on top of her meticulousness and her calm and her sharp strategic mind and...had she always been so beautiful?

“Nathalie,” he said, and didn’t know how to go on. 

Her hands gave a quick squeeze and then trailed lightly down his arms before she put them behind her back again. “You could have Emilie back before the month is out.” 

Guilt filled Gabriel’s chest at the mention of his wife’s name. He jerked his gaze away from Nathalie to the far wall, disgusted at himself for the way he had stared at her. What was wrong with him? He loved Emilie. Emilie was more important than anything, and he had vowed to be faithful to her for life, vowed not to let anything get in the way of bringing her back.

“Fine,” he said, wishing it were easier to say. “We will attempt this. But you are _ not _ to use the miraculous before the time comes. You need to save your strength.”

Once again, a trace of a smile turned the corner of her mouth. “Thank you.” Then her manner changed, shoulders tensing. “If you’ll excuse me for a moment, sir.”

He gave a single nod, and watched Nathalie turn on her heel and cross to the door of the atelier with steps that tried too hard not to look hurried. The door didn’t much muffle her hacking coughs as it closed behind her. He was halfway across the room himself before he stopped himself.

*****

That night, after Nathalie had tidied her desk, bid him good evening and left for home, he went down to visit Emilie. For once, standing in front of her casket, he didn’t know what to say. Instead he stepped forward and placed a hand on the glass.

She looked lifeless. That shouldn’t have struck him as unusual - he knew her condition all too well - but her closed, veiny eyelids, her lips set in a straight line, the pale curve of her jaw, were all so  _ still _ . Ordinarily, it occurred to him, her familiar face served as a trigger and a focus for the memories of her that always milled around the edges of his mind, waiting for a chance to take the spotlight. He saw the Emilie in his mind’s eye, rather than the one in the casket. Now, though, he found himself staring at a corpse.

“I’m sorry, my love,” he said. “You have been here for too long already, and I have been…”

_ Distracted _ , his mind suggested, but he pushed the thought away. “Careless. I can try harder. I can do better.”

The fluorescent lights around the edge of the casket buzzed softly in the quiet. With a sigh, Gabriel turned his back on his wife and began the long walk back to the lift.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took far longer than I wanted it to, but it's here, and I think I'm happy with how it turned out. As always, thanks for the love on this story. It warms my heart. (And heaven knows something needs warmed, because the heat is broken in my dorm...RIP all of us.)


	4. Chapter 4

Nathalie rarely saw Gabriel nervous. Their conversation in the garden on Heroes’ Day was the closest he had come to real, visible anxiety since he asked Emilie to marry him, and even in that case, Nathalie doubted that anyone who knew him less well would have seen the unease hidden in his eyes as he asked her if she was sure.

Given this, his fidgeting on the morning of the Bourgeois’ anniversary party surprised her even more than it irritated her.

She kept quiet for some time, busy at emails and paperwork, only glancing around her computer monitor occasionally to see Gabriel pacing, or tapping his stylus on the podium, or turning it in his fingers, or fiddling with the hem of his sleeve. At last, as the time for her to leave for the party approached, she closed the last tab on the screen and stood up.

Gabriel glanced over at her, opened his mouth, and closed it again.

“Do you need anything else from me before I go?” she asked.

Instead of answering, he crossed the distance separating them and took hold of her hands. “Are you certain about this, Nathalie?”

“Quite certain, sir,” she said, noting the way his frown deepened slightly at her deliberate use of a formal address. It put her out of temper - he thought he could expect familiarity from her when it suited him while keeping her at arm’s length the rest of the time, did he? - and she found herself saying, “I hardly see the need to reopen this conversation when a decision was already made.”

He showed no sign of anger. “I know what we decided. Humor my concern, Nathalie, please.” 

Nathalie gave a single nod, noticed that her hands were still in his, and pulled them away to clasp them behind her back. “Yes, sir. Now, before I go, I will need my miraculous.”

*****

“Mister Gabriel said you weren’t going to be Mayura anymore,” said Duusu from her perch on Nathalie’s shoulder as Nathalie walked down the hall toward the front door.

“I persuaded him otherwise.”

Duusu hummed thoughtfully. “He worries about you. He’s right. You shouldn’t be doing this when you’re sick.”

Nathalie wondered, not for the first time, if Duusu realized that she was the cause of her holder’s illness. She certainly didn’t seem to realize that she was being used illicitly and for questionable purposes; Nathalie couldn’t imagine her knowing that and not caring. She decided Duusu’s lack of awareness of her own situation was probably a blessing.

“Gabriel worries too much,” she said as she pushed open the door. A gust of wind rushed over her, fresh and mild, and she took a deep breath, struck by how good the outside air felt in her now permanently tight lungs. Maybe she should ask if she could keep the window by her desk cracked open while the fall weather lasted. 

*****

Two hours later, Mayura landed on a rooftop and gasped in air, looking down at the latest akuma. She had followed Heart Hunter halfway across the city, waiting for Ladybug and Chat Noir’s inevitable appearance, and her chest burned with the exertion. It seemed that her lungs had just been waiting for her to stop moving. A fit of coughs seized her, bringing a wave of dizziness with it, and she dropped to her knees, trying to head off a more dangerous fall to the street below.

She missed the sound of footsteps behind her, so the hand closing gently around her wrist came as a surprise. “I really wish I didn’t have to involve you in all of this,” Hawkmoth said.

Mayura let him pull her to her feet; she was breathing a little easier now, at least until she had to take off running again. The same irritation from earlier prodded at her mind, but it couldn’t find purchase, not now that she was transformed and could feel his earnest concern and sympathy seeping in through her brooch and warming her whole body. She couldn’t very well resent him for worrying about his only friend. Her feelings, including her infestation of foolish hopes, were no one’s fault but her own.

She coughed again, and Hawkmoth, who had just let go of her wrist, moved to grip her shoulders, but she kept her feet this time. “I want to be here,” she said, smiling up at him. “I want to help you.” 

Her words didn’t entirely set him at ease, she could tell, but he accepted them, turning wordlessly to look down at the akuma and the red-clad figure that had appeared in front of it while they were talking. “There she is.”

“Without her lap cat,” Mayura observed. “How strange.”

She gestured for Hawkmoth to follow as Ladybug and the akuma moved away. They sprang across a half-dozen buildings until they reached a better vantage point, partially sheltered behind a wall, to watch their enemy go by.

“It’s always the same,” Hawkmoth said, his voice low in Mayura’s ear. “Whenever she’s backed up against a wall, Ladybug engages others to fight by her side.”

Mayura kept her head turned away from him, her eyes fixed on the battle playing out two streets away. They had been over all this before, of course, but for whatever reason he enjoyed his dramatic monologues and she saw no reason to stop him. She tried not to focus on the heat of his body against her back or the feeling of his breath against her ear. He had absolutely no reason to be standing so close.

“I’m convinced that the guardian of the miraculous is who she seeks every time.”

“And this time we’re ready for it,” Mayura responded. “We’ll have him soon, I’m sure of it.”

“It would be impossible without you, my peahen.”

Mayura’s face turned hot as she felt him slip an arm around her waist. That was entirely unnecessary, but she didn’t pull away. She kept her gaze fixed on Ladybug as the latter ran down into a subway entrance to escape the akuma that pursued her. Heart Hunter bumped against the entrance, too big to fit, before giving up and turning off in another direction.

“Did we lose her?”

“Give her a moment,” Hawkmoth said. “She may be coming back out the same way.”

“If that’s the case, I need to be ready to go after her.”

Hawkmoth seemed to realize where his arm was, and stepped back hurriedly, letting go of Mayura; even standing out in the sun, with heat radiating off the black shingles, she felt cold at the loss of proximity. She finally trusted herself to look back over her shoulder at him. 

He frowned back. “Remember, if you find the guardian, don’t engage him alone. Call me and we’ll do it together.” 

“I remember.”

He put his hand on her shoulder. “I’m serious, Mayura. Be careful” - he broke off, looking past her. “There she is.”

Without another word, Mayura shrugged off Hawkmoth’s hand and sprang off the roof in pursuit of the crimson streak in the distance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is back from its long hibernation! I have the discipline of a jellyfish when it comes to my creative process...sorry.


End file.
